We know that humans are inference machines. With very little information, people can guess at rates above chance whether someone is a psychopath. With a 10-second video clip, people can correctly guess whether someone is gay 81 percent of the time. To many, “stereotype” is a word practically synonymous with “false,” but stereotype accuracy is one of the best replicated findings in psychology. You can accurately infer a lot about someone simply by knowing their ethnicity, sex, or country of origin. Of course, when we know people better, we tend to rely relatively more on our own experience. [...]
For most characteristics, it looks like genetics are much more important than parenting. One large study found that, for adopted children, their rate of criminality was 12 percent if their biological parents were criminals but their adopted parents were not criminals—but just 6 percent if their adoptive parents were criminals and their biological parents were not. When both sets of parents, biological and adoptive, were criminals, the rate of criminality shot up to 40 percent. There is a similar pattern when it comes to drug and alcohol abuse. If we know that Pete is a criminal with a substance-abuse problem, his father Jack is much more likely to have these problems as well. [...]
It’s surprising that there is almost no research about how much we judge people based on their relatives, given the abundance of evidence showing that we make quick inferences about other people on the basis of little information. Some sociologists have looked into a related bias, called the “courtesy stigma.” If you associate with someone who is stigmatized in society, like someone with substance-abuse problems, schizophrenia, or a cognitive disability, that stigma can fall on you. “Family stigma” is one form of courtesy stigma.
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